“Jazz ’em all if you like,” said Randall, “but get the money.
Ben, I want you to go round with him Saturday.”
Ben laughed silently and cynically into the air:
“Oh, my God!” he said.
“Do you expect me to check up on the little thug?
He’s been knocking down on you for the last six months.”
“All right! All right!” said Randall, annoyed.
“That’s what I want you to find out.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Randall,” said Ben contemptuously, “he’s got niggers on that book who’ve been dead for five years.
That’s what you get for keeping every little crook that comes along.”
“If you don’t get a move on, 3, I’ll give your route to another boy,” said Randall.
“Hell, get another boy.
I don’t care,” said Number 3, toughly.
“Oh, for God’s sake!
Listen to this, won’t you?” said Ben, laughing thinly and nodding to his angel, indicating Number 3 with a scowling jerk of his head.
“Yes, listen to this, won’t you!
That’s what I said,” Number 3 answered pugnaciously.
“All right, little boy.
Run on and deliver your papers now, before you get hurt,” said Ben, turning his scowl quietly upon him and looking at him blackly for a moment.
“Ah, you little crook,” he said with profound loathing,
“I have a kid brother who’s worth six like you.”
Spring lay strewn lightly like a fragrant gauzy scarf upon the earth; the night was a cool bowl of lilac darkness, filled with fresh orchard scents.
Gant slept heavily, rattling the loose window-sash with deep rasping snores; with short explosive thunders, ripping the lilac night, 36 began to climb Saluda.
She bucked helplessly like a goat, her wheels spun furiously on the rails, Tom Cline stared seriously down into the milky boiling creek, and waited.
She slipped, spun, held, ploughed slowly up, like a straining mule, into the dark.
Content, he leaned far out the cab and looked: the starlight glimmered faintly on the rails.
He ate a thick sandwich of cold buttered fried meat, tearing it raggedly and glueily staining it under his big black fingers.
There was a smell of dogwood and laurel in the cool slow passage of the world.
The cars clanked humpily across the spur; the switchman, bathed murkily in the hot yellow light of his perilous bank-edged hut, stood sullen at the switch.
Arms spread upon his cab-sill, chewing thoughtfully, Tom, goggle-eyed, looked carefully down at him.
They had never spoken.
Then in silence he turned and took the milk-bottle, half full of cold coffee, that his fireman offered him.
He washed his food down with the large easy gurgling swallows of a bishop.
At 18 Valley Street, the red shack-porch, slime-scummed with a greasy salve of yellow negroid mud, quaked rottenly.
Number 3’s square-folded ink-fresh paper struck flat against the door, falling on its edge stiffly to the porch like a block of light wood.
Within, May Corpening stirred nakedly, muttering as if doped and moving her heavy copper legs, in the fetid bed-warmth, with the slow noise of silk.
Harry Tugman lit a Camel, drawing the smoke deep into his powerful ink-stained lungs as he watched the press run down.
His bare arms were heavy-muscled as his presses.
He dropped comfortably into his pliant creaking chair and tilted back, casually scanning the warm pungent sheet.
Luxurious smoke steamed slowly from his nostrils.
He cast the sheet away.
“Christ!” he said.
“What a makeup!”
Ben came down stairs, moody, scowling, and humped over toward the ice-box.
“For God’s sake, Mac,” he called out irritably to the Make-up Man, as he scowled under the lifted lid, “don’t you ever keep anything except root-beer and sour milk?”
“What do you want, for Christ’s sake?”
“I’d like to get a Coca–Cola once in a while.
You know,” he said bitingly, “Old Man Candler down in Atlanta is still making it.”
Harry Tugman cast his cigarette away.
“They haven’t got the news up here yet, Ben,” said he.